Case study:

A case study in light

Libris brings local brand consistency to global lighting giant

Brand consistency woes

Michelle Shield, Head of Design and Digital Publishing at the Thorn central marketing team, explains: “The way we work and the material we produce is changing, customers want marketing that focuses on their specific needs, it is hard to maintain brand consistency on the ad hoc locally produced collateral that the countries are producing to meet this demand; this was becoming a real issue for us. Thorn produces marketing literature in 11 languages so in addition to the central marketing team, there are local marketing teams worldwide. With so many teams and people involved, and so many local literature requests, we had limited control and sometimes didn’t get to see what was going out to customers. We were in the dark when it came to local collateral and could get surprises when we did happen to see something.”

“Tender documents and custom end-user marketing material were the most problematic. The local teams know the rules and the brand but everyone likes to put their own spin on things and I would often get requests to help tidy up urgent ad hoc tenders that were never part of any planned work – the demand was sales led rather than marketing. To make matters worse, all the requests would use similar information but it was all stored in different places.”

Thorn’s objectives for Libris

Improve the consistency of the brand message in locally produced marketing collateral

To allow countries to be able to produce bespoke customer literature to manage local customer requests

Reduce time spent doing unplanned jobs, including ad hoc tenders

“It’s a great solution for our business! We can create customised catalogues for demanding key account customers, excellent bid documents to differentiate from the competition, masterplans to coordinate several parties in a long-term project and small campaign catalogues to promote advanced products and accompany customer training.”

Wolfgang BerneckerBusiness Initiative Manager at Thorn
and a super user of Libris

Libris brings local brand consistency to global lighting giant.

Thorn Lighting is a globally trusted supplier of both outdoor and indoor luminaires and integrated controls. Their ‘smart’ and sustainable lighting solutions create comfortable, fulfilling environments for people to live and work in more than 100 countries around the world. As well as being a lighting giant, Thorn is one of our earliest clients, having worked with us for more than 10 years.

As one of Thorn’s preferred marketing partners, we often get together to discuss their marketing projects and problems so we can share creative and innovative ideas. It was during one of these discussions that it came to light that the central marketing team were finding that not all locally produced materials were within the brand guidelines, especially in a time when targeted bespoke literature is being demanded. All too often, when it came to local ad hoc collateral, local marketing teams were reinventing the wheel and doing their own thing, regardless of the brand guidelines.

Benefits of Libris for Thorn

Brand consistency in all countries and regions

Time savings by centrally storing marketing materials and allowing master documents to be re-purposed and customised for different countries and customers

Empowers people to modify documents within Thorn brand guidelines so they gain a real sense of ownership

Introducing local brand control

As soon as we learned about Thorn’s challenges, we instantly knew we had the solution with Libris. We introduced Michelle and her team to the concept of using a central online platform for editing collateral.

By centrally holding marketing collateral which can be edited only within pre-set user permissions, Libris gives marketing managers control over document branding and content.

Libris empowers local sales and marketing teams to create their own literature while giving managers peace of mind that they can’t produce something that waters down the brand.

Michelle continues: “When Libris was put forward as a software solution, I immediately knew it had great potential to solve our issues.”

Launching Libris into Thorn

Libris was launched in September 2014 into 19 regions ranging from the UK to India. There are currently 19 users including three super users.

Thorn internally branded the software as Thorn Publishing on Demand (TPOD) to reflect that electronic and printed PDF documents can be produced quickly.

Michelle explains: “The Libris team were really good from the start. They helped scope out the project and were there every step of the way, including supplying online training.”

“We had a few IT issues trying to get Libris to work with our internal networks but the Libris team were brilliant at helping to fix these and we found a workaround.”

Bringing the benefits of local brand consistency to Thorn

The main focus for Libris at Thorn is producing custom catalogues for end-user customers, allowing tailored local catalogues to be printed on demand. Only the relevant products are included and the most up-to-date information can be easily imported from the main catalogue. Libris allows users to take information from various documents and combine into one complete and coherent document.

“Brand consistency is definitely the most valuable benefit – everything that comes out of it looks and feels great!” explains Michelle.

“Libris is really easy to use so it’s been well received. People like it because you can see what you’re getting and controlling – it’s not all HTML coding. They also feel like they are producing their own material so there is real ownership but at the same time I can rest easy because I know everything will be on brand.

“The benefits we’re gaining from having Libris are similar to those we experienced when we first centralised marketing. We’re saving a lot of duplicated effort and only local adaptations are now needed. Colleagues are no longer doing their own thing!”